The advent of various types of media content access devices has provided users with access to a large number and variety of media content choices. For example, a user may choose to access a variety of broadcast television programs, pay-per-view services, video-on-demand programming, and other video content by way of a set-top box device, a television, a personal computer, a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (“FDA”), a portable media player (e.g., an iPod or the like), a tablet computer (e.g., an iPad or the like), or any other type of media content access device.
Widely varying display capabilities associated with each type of media content access device have necessitated the development of anamorphic methods for video content delivery and display. In other words, video content may be modified in different ways depending on the particular media content access device by which it will be presented. For example, video content may be stretched, scaled, windowboxed, cropped, etc. in order to be properly displayed by a particular media content access device.
It is often desirable to objectively analyze and compare anamorphic video content instances. For example, it may be desirable to compare different versions of the same movie (e.g., an HD version configured to be displayed on an HD television and a lower-resolution version configured to be displayed on a display screen of a mobile phone) to determine whether either of the two different versions contains visual artifacts or other types of errors and/or to determine a relative quality of one version versus the other. However, because of the inherently distinct nature of anamorphic video content, automatic and objective analysis and comparison of anamorphic video content has heretofore proven to be extremely difficult (or even impossible in some scenarios), resource intense, and time consuming.